From The Food Encyclopedia by Jacques Rolland and Carol Sherman
From a dough of the same name, used to make very light and flaky pastries, including allumettes, croissants, Napoleons and palmiers. The dough must be rolled out and folded repeatedly (up to seven times), with several layers of butter. One of the most delicate and time-consuming of doughs, when it is baked, the moisture in the butter creates steam between the layers, causing them to separate. The invention of puff pastry (the French term is pâte feuilletée or leaf pastry or mille-feuille in French, meaning "1,000 leaves") is credited to Claude Gellée, a 17th-century landscape painter and amateur cook, also known as Claude Lorrain, after the place of his birth in France. Italian authorities, on the other hand, are unanimous in naming Florence as its birthplace, noting it was expressly cited in a 1525 decree issued by the Council of Ten in Venice, which condemned puff pastry and other dishes as grandiose. Also, batches of puff pastry were served at the wedding of Marie de' Medici and Henry IV of France.
